Hernes

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novella, Short Stories, Audiobook

142 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Henk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Native American women dying in troves due to smallpox, 1919 coughs that turn out to be Spanish flu, early 20th century women not wanting to marry, rape, anxiety on daughters marrying to wrong men, miscarriage, marriage troubles, women forced to give up careers to take on care tasks - this book has everything in an admirable fashion
What can you do to evil but refuse it?

A little gem of a novella, an homage to Virginia Woolf and capturing the multitude of experiences of women in a fictional Oregon city. Can easily compete with the best from Elizabeth Strout her Lucy Barton novels.

Klatsand Oregon is a fictional town whereupon Ursula K. Le Guin projects a flurry of snippets of women lives.

The scene where a women confronted her husband with his infidelity is incredible well done.
Also the mother going to slap a Stanford “the rich boy school” student is a very capturing scene.
Besides the scene descriptions, the characters are amazingly well done. From Lily seeing angels, projecting this on Virginia, her daughter as well, Jane Hernes, the straight forward grandmother, Fanny, everyone of them is quite distinct and clear.
Men asking women what they want, even though they say it to their husband all the time, is a recurring theme.
Disappearing elks and budding environmentalism is another recurring thread, as is the Persephone myth. A very rich book, that manages incredible things in a little number of pages.

Quotes:
That she won’t amount to anything, won’t come to be who she is. What women ever did?

A man has the right to do what he chooses, yes.

I’m not your wife if your wife is just one of your women.

All I have is self respect

It is like there’s a country in me where I can’t go

As if the mind is a beach

[Misha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the last novella in Searoad, a novel Le Guin wrote set in a fictional seaside town in Oregon.

"Hernes" concerns the lives, experiences, and perspectives of several generations of women in one family.

As the Port Townsend-based small press who reprinted the novella said, "Hernes after life (as contained within Searoad) has been strange: first published by HarperCollins as 'Literary Fiction,' then by Prentice Hall as 'Romance,' then a decade later by Shambhala as 'Spiritual Literature.' Each genre correct and incorrect in a different way. Hernes is spiritual, literary and romantic but it is a genreless tale. It is an homage to Virginia Woolf but not only that. It is an inquiry into myth but never academic. It loops through time, jumping into many voices and modes, very subtly uncovering the scope of these people's lives. It is layered with images and textures that weave into a fully realized work of art: multifaceted, angry, compassionate, openended, serious, and generous."

This passage from Jane, 1966, about how in her work at the post office she refused to serve the wealthy man whose son raped her daughter:

"I did what I could, and it was nothing. What can you do to evil but refuse it? Not pretend it isn't there, but look at it, and know it, and refuse it. Punishment, what is punishment? Getting even, schoolboy stuff. The Bible God, vengeance is mine! And then it flips over and goes too far the other way, forgive them for they know not what they do. Who does know? I don't. But I have tried to know. I don't forgive a person who doesn't try to know, doesn't want to know if he does evil or not. I think in their heart they know what they do, and do it because it is in their power to do it. It is their power. It is their power over others, over us. Will's power over his sons. His son's power over my daughter. I can't do much against it, but I don't have to salute it, or smile at it, or serve it. I can turn my back on it. And I did." (109)

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Read in "The Found and the Lost")
When reading any Le Guin work, I worry that I don't have the capacity to understand or catch every nuance of meaning she writes into the story.

Reading "Hernes" had me worried at first because of how the narrative is split into different times and different voices but it pans out beautifully into a story of generations. Women who go through what women do while no one else notices. It is amazing and heartbreaking. By the end I believed I knew these women and had lived and suffered with them.

[Wesley McCraw · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novella is included in "The Found and the Lost". I've seen some mixed to negative reviews of it, so I wanted to say for the record that "Hernes" is amazing. I can very much see why Le Quin wanted it included in this collection. It's deep, rich, personal, challenging, spiritual, philosophical, and vital. It shows what a novella can do when it throws away the conventions. It captures life.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

An evocative, if bleak, multi-generational tale.

1991's Hernes is something of an outlier for Le Guin in that there's nothing terribly fantastical or speculative about it. Instead, it's a fine little multi-generational story of women and their lives in around a small Oregon town from the turn of the 20th century until around the Vietnam War. While the characters speak of other (usually male) characters moving about the world, the female POV characters mostly stay put -- leading to an unusually claustrophobic feel to the whole affair. The fact that none of the women seem genuinely happy or joyful with their lots in life adds to this. There are allusions to the tale of Persephone who lives half the year in Hell which feels appropriate. All ion all, a well-written, if rather bleak slice of the Pacific Northwest

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful study of many family generations, reminded me a bit of the Blackwater books without the supernatural element.

[Troy Shirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is perfect

[Hojaplateada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leído desde "Lo encontrado y lo perdido"

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

2.5 "it was ok+" on the first read, "liked it+" 3.5 on the second skim back through, rounding up to a 4 really liked it after spending with other Goodreads reviewers and some extra internet search and time thinking more about it. I sure would love to see a full literary analysis to help me connect all the layers.

Because it was part of a compilation of stories in LeGuin’s "The Found and the Lost" from her bigger career focus of science/speculative fiction, I didn’t know what to expect. I think knowing from the beginning what some of the structure was going to be and that it was going to be realistic literary fiction would’ve helped. Jumping around in time and points of view of 4 generations of white women in Oregon from the late 1800’s to the 1970’s, it kept you on your toes - “Wait, how old would Jane be in this chapter?” “Let me think, what has already happened to Lily in this chapter?” This is definitely a novella to be read within a short number of readings so you can remember what you know and can connect.

Some musings:
* I think perhaps the structure is intended to draw you in and then push you back out like the waves. Drawing you in: yes , it’s about these specific people in a specific time and place. Pushing you back out: it’s more universal than that. Bringing in the Persephone myth also makes the stories more universal

* LeGuin is like Virgina - a poet born in 1929 publishing poetry at similar times. Perhaps then LeGuin connecting herself to a broader matrilineage and the broader experiences of women.

* Love letter to Oregon highlighting its natural beauty with a nod to the excitement of San Francisco. Her inclusion, however brief, of the Native American Fanny, I thought was her 1991 version of a land acknowledgement of sorts, recognizing that the Oregon story did not start with white people even though her story focuses on white people.

* Divorce, unwed motherhood and female independence, and all getting to live their lives in freedom and with depth thank you very much. The freedom from men, by choice and not, gives us the matrilineal focus.

* The dialog in the 2 marriages is brilliant. In both cases, the men just don’t get it and can’t hear what their wives are telling them, caught up in their own points of view. I’m so curious what different men think when they read these 2 chapters. Is it so brilliantly done that they too can see what these men were missing? Or do they read it and identify with the bewilderment of the husbands. [Yet another of many reasons to be thankful for my husband who does not resemble any of the men in this story.]

* The final chapter’s stark stylistic change and final, “We have the same name,” parallel closure is haunting me. There is so much more here that when I think I’m on the edge of an a-ha, it escapes me. There are multiple other layers in the novella that I think I may have talked about all the wrong things. Again, would love to see a literary analysis of someone better at this than me.

[Lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Least favorite novella I've come across in "The Found and the Lost" collection. While a few scenes piqued my attention, most significantly the two conversations between Jane and Virginia and their respective husbands that captured the utter cluelessness and quiet suffering of women in a way I don't think I've seen before, the particular writing style (abstract, flowery, too unconventional and symbolic for my liking) combined with the generally slow, unexciting pace definitely made me lost interest in this story around the half-way point. I found myself checking to see how many pages were left a few times, though I really tried to enjoy and lose myself in this story.

I understand that the beauty of this novella is in its themes, and Le Guin really packed a ton of punch into this story in that respect. But none of it was very revolutionary, in my opinion, though they were complex and well-portrayed, and I just don't care enough about this story to reread, analyze, or put much thought into a more fleshed-out, informed opinion. This was the first of Le Guin's works that I've come across where the portrayal of larger themes and layered complexities (that from what other reviews say, seem to take more than one read-through to fully appreciate) detracted from the story being an interesting one.

Also, I hate to say, but I feel as though this was one of her worse works in terms of writing. Some of the sentences were....dare I say....badly written? Like they played with form and structure in a way that stuck out like a sore thumb to me, detracted from my reading experience, and came off as quite clunky and juvenile. An example:

"What oh what oh now oh now that's blood, there's blood. I am bleeding. I am blood, blood. I am dead."

No other parts of the story, except for other random sentences written similarly and equally surprisingly, are written like this. So when I came across, this, I cringed? I didn't really get it, in fact, I hated it. Not knocking Le Guin as a writer here, as a majority of the book was written quite well

[kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story looks into the lives of four distinct women who are continuations of each other. Set in Klatsand, a coastal town in Oregon, each chapter offers a glimpse of dreams, disappointments, and memories of the Hernes women. Feminist themes are plentiful, from maternity to self-sufficiency. The stories are also rich with metaphors of nature, using weather, animals, the beach, and the forest, to describe transformation, interconnectedness, and impermanence. Le Guin’s writing in Hernes is succinct, poetic, heartbreaking, and profound. The cyclical nature of history leaves the stories of these women in its wake.

Notable scenes for me: Virginia’s descriptions of sea foam, Fanny’s contemplations on Jane’s wedding day, Jane’s reflections in the Breton Head house.

And so it is not salt-white, but oxidizes to dun or yellowish as the living cells decay. It’s death that colors it. If it were pure foam of water the bubbles would last no longer than the bursting bubbles of a freshwater creek. But this is the water of the sea, brewed, imbued, souped up with life and life’s dying and decaying. It is tainted, it is profoundly impure. It is the mother-fluid, the amniotic minestrone.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this the way it was intended first, and it is quite good. The story spirals around the lives of women from four generations of a family. It is not in chronological order which allows themes to be viewed through the lenses of different time periods.

After that, I read it in chronological order. It isn’t as good that way, but I did get to see the story as it progressed through time.

This novella also appears in Searoads.

[A.M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So hard to identify the genre, it is a tale of the lives of women in one family. Their homes, their children, and in an almost incidental way, their men.

It manages to shove so MUCH stuff into less than 150 pages. Almost like a quilt, of small pieces stitched together to make the larger picture.

Extraordinary.

5 stars

[Daniela Sanchez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discovered Le Guin at the Seattle book fair. Hernes was a surprisingly honest reflection on 4 generations of women in a family building a home and history in the PNW. Poetry mixed with history.

I can’t wait to pick up my next Le Guin novel.

[George Dobson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't quite in the zone for this one. Bit it was a nice tale of being connected to the place you're from. Which I'm getting now, missing my home. For Le Guin it's the North West of the USA, for me it's the North West of England.

[David Sastre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just ok.

[Aly McWilliams · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit too abstract for me.

[Mónica Cordero Thomson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Primer relato que leo de ursula.
me ha gustado mucho el tono y el trasfondo feminista.
Asimismo, el estudio histórico del siglo XX es muy bueno y enlazado de una manera diferente y original.

[David George · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.2

Poetic…the painful beauty of place and story and the path through relational time

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

ursula, beautiful as always. been loving foam recently, so portions of this hit just right

[lyra · Rating 4 out of 5]

woman making woman making woman in myth by the sea.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

vakker om familierelasjoner, kvinneliv gjennom fire generasjoner, om Persefone og havet og vestkysten

[Rohith Rokkam · Rating 5 out of 5]

ethereal kind of story, very classic feminist le guin. solid read

e: can't believe I forgot about the jesus line when reviewing this. +1 star for that line alone. that hit really really hard

[Emeth Lumen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing I say will do justice to the poetry of this book.